


The Bluebird Girls

by lonely_is_so_lonely_alone



Category: Holby City
Genre: 1950’s au, F/F, F/M, Journalists, Mentions of rape - canon, Mentions of suicide - canon, Scrub In, Spanish Civil War, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-10
Updated: 2018-09-10
Packaged: 2019-07-10 14:47:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15951542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonely_is_so_lonely_alone/pseuds/lonely_is_so_lonely_alone
Summary: If you were to go through the red door at 33 St James’ street, you’d first pass the desk where Connie sits, though she’s not there at this particular moment – having just nipped out for a cigarette when she thought no one was looking. There’ll be Bernie, head of the paper now, rushing out on some adventure with a ‘goodbye’ shouted through the closing door.But it’s home to them, to their little battalion of journalists, more than there had been back when Ric rocked up to the party.  If you go up the stairs, you’ll find the desks set out in neat little rows. There’s a cork board at the far side, a world map pinned into place.Home, yes, but for how much longer?-	A 1950’s AU filled with the intrigue of the world of journalism.





	The Bluebird Girls

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Artwork: The Bluebird Girls](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15955754) by [JD543](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JD543/pseuds/JD543). 
  * Inspired by [Artwork: The Bluebird Girls](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15955754) by [JD543](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JD543/pseuds/JD543). 



i

 

‘Where do you see yourself in twenty years then?’ she asks, balancing a cigarette on an ashtray. He isn’t looking at her, but he thinks she knows why. There’s always too much in their looks -  love though they don’t say the word. Anger, too, at them – at the world, the way everything is these days.

He fiddles with his lighter, watches the flame burn beside them. ‘Greying and tired. Most probably dead.’

‘You’re not that old.’

She has her head on his chest, lying together beneath the open window. Open, not by choice but by necessity for the glass had been blown out a month before. The war, that was it. Not their war but a war all the same. Here, in between the destruction of the world, the houses shot to pieces, the bodies lying in the street, they sit, side by side, watching and waiting; two lost figures who, when searching blind, found each other.

There’s a camera on the bedside table, the one he brought with him when he came to England. His father gave him the money for it the last time they saw each other. Decades ago now, if he really stops to think. He hasn’t been home, to his real home, in such a long time.

‘What are you thinking about?’ she asks.

‘You,’ he says.

A pause, her eyes darting away, then: ‘I nearly got shot today.’

He doesn’t know what to say to that, just presses a kiss against her skin and then looks away. His eyes trace the balcony, silhouetted black in the darkness. He’s not sure she even wants a response, rather she just wanted him to know. A statement, factual and true, not a question to be answered. He refuses to think about a world where she doesn’t exist anymore. She will be here forever, surely, at least as long as he is – he is older, much older, than she. That, to him, is as true as anything - as sure as his heart is beating in his chest. As sure as nothing, in the long run. It turns out that it’s a traitor’s heart, in the end.

This is Spain, 1937, the height of a war. They’re here for the same reason, cameras in hand, photographs air mailed back to England. They work for the same paper, that’s how they met. He was her superior, taught her everything.

So to this war zone they had come and now they cling to each other like the world is falling apart. Which, to be honest, it is. These days in this one bedroom apartment with no windows, there is never silence. Everything is punctuated by something, invading, insidious: screams like running water, gunshots like disease. An endemic sweeping through the country, preparing to infect the rest of Europe.

There is a war in him too, conflicting him and pulling at his sinews, his muscles, his heartstrings. Diane, with her headstrong nature and kind eyes. Diane who practically fell into his office straight from school, a camera in her hands. She had known, always had, what kind of life it was she wanted to live. It seemed this was it. But this is no life, this is existence.

In England, it had been easier to stay apart, the attraction a constant undercurrent. But in Spain everything had been different, his heart turned over, his head falling in the sight of such brutality. And he had loved her, then, as the world ripped itself to nothing but ruins, more than ever before. It is here that his feelings seem more sharp – everything stopped making sense so he made his own sense with her.

There’s one difference here, though, to England and it’s mortality – no longer an idea, a construct; its mortality, the constantly dying’s companion. Mortality, switching effortlessly to fatality.  

‘Did you get my message this morning?’ she asks, her voice quiet. He watches her intently, puts a hand on her arm and notices that she’s tense. He nods, then, and sees her close her eyes.

‘Elliot says we can go home next week,’ he says, even though he wants to forget it – stay here with her forever in this shattered idyll.

‘Yes,’ she breathes, eyes still shut. ‘Do you want to?’

He doesn’t answer the question. She knows he won’t. There’s a reason they’ve left it until now, as the sky lights up with the whiskey colour of explosions. He doesn’t want to talk about it and neither does she. Talking about it means they have to decide: stay or go. A simple choice, but one he is loathe to make right now. Going home means that this will all change, he’s sure of it. No more nights sleeping side by side while the sun fades, waiting for that perfect photograph.

In England, people will talk of the two journalists who go home with each other every evening. Ric knows they will. Elliot would be mad, of course, because they would be breaking so many rules and everything had to be just right with him. Connie would laugh, throw her head back in that way she did, and make some sarcastic comment. And the others, well they were harder to judge.

Jac would probably say something unkind, try and cost Diane her job while she was at it. Is spiteful enough, that’s sure. Bernie would roll her eyes because she already knew – always knew everything. The rest, well, it is all theoretical anyway so what did it matter?

‘What’s wrong?’ Diane asks, turning so she can look him in the eye. He squirms under her gaze, sees no way out but to talk it through.

‘Nothing,’ he lies.

‘You mean everything,’ she says.

‘Everything then,’ he says, because she is right.

‘This is it, isn’t it?’

‘It doesn’t have to be.’

She doesn’t say anything to that, just stays resting there on his chest. A silence that lasts a lifetime. This is what they have become: lovers in these dark days, whiskey in a mug as the photographs develop. This is them, and this is the end of them, too. But it doesn’t have to be. One last chance. A shot he’s willing to take, now, when faced with a future that can’t have her in.

‘Marry me,’ he says. And that is that.

Yes, indeed. This is the end of it, nothing else to do now.

‘No,’ she says.

And that, he thinks, is how history is made.

  
  


ii

 

A red door. The summer of 1952. 33 St James’ Street, three houses down from the bakery and five up from the funeral directors. It had been a house, was converted in ’33 when the paper was first started.

Founded by Swedish father grieving the loss of his eldest son, it initially only had one journalist, Elliot Hope, and a secretary in the form of the very formidable Connie Beauchamp. But they had grown, the paper wolfed down by the town, and soon they’d been hiring left right and centre. It was then that Ric had come on the scene, swooping in having only recently arrived in England. And then there was Diane, but we won’t talk about her for too long.

If you were to go through the red door at 33 St James’ street, you’d first pass the desk where Connie sits, though she’s not there at this particular moment – having just nipped out for a cigarette when she thought no one was looking. There’ll be Bernie, head of the paper now, rushing out on some adventure with a ‘Goodbye’ shouted through the closing door.

Then you’d go to your right, walk through a room that was once meant for grander things than housing the copies of every paper they have ever produced. The stairs next, spiralling up and away, so small that you practically have to go sideways to slip up. The fourth one creaks, drives everyone mad most days but they’d all worry if someone actually bothered to fix it.

But it’s home to them, to their little battalion of journalists, more than there had been back when Ric rocked up to the party.  If you go up the stairs, you’ll find the desks, all four of them, set out in neat little rows. There’s a cork board at the far side, a world map pinned into place.

And then there’s Ric, sitting by his typewriter, tapping away at the keys. It’s just gone seven, early morning air slipping through a half open window. Him, that’s all;  that’s how he wanted it to be. He’s not typing an article, though he has enough to be getting on with. It’s one word, that’s it. Just again and again, to try and get his mind to clear.  

‘What you doing here so early, Mr Griffin?’ a voice sounds into the quiet. He snaps up, scans the room and finds the intruder almost instantly. Donna, standing at the top of the stairs, hands stuffed into her pockets. She’s been here years, works in copying – doing this that and the other, helping out anyone who needs it.

He shrugs and Donna starts towards him. The office isn’t big and she’s there almost immediately. That’s when he tries to remove the single sheet of paper in his typewriter. As he goes to pull it towards him, Donna gets there first. She takes the paper, holds it close and soon sees what it says – that single word again and again.

Diane.

No more, no less. Her name, a dozen times. A memorial, you might say.

It’s been eight days now, no time at all. Eight days since that truth he held so dear crumbled to nothing more than a memory. Of course she would live longer than him, he had twenty years on her. Twenty years, it seemed, that it was never in doubt. And then all of that was put paid to by a bloody train and a half empty bottle of sleeping pills to numb the pain.

He still can’t understand it – any of it. His head’s been spinning for days, never settling, not for long. Always back to Diane, that’s it. It always comes back to her. It’s not like they’d been close recently, time splitting them. It had started half a decade before, when she had married. That had been something Ric had struggled with, his hypocrisy shining through. Twenty years wasn’t all he had on her, was it – there were four wives, added to the mix. And yet, when Owen had come into the picture, everything had shifted. But even when Owen had gone, fleeing from the scene, things had refused to right themselves.

Since Spain, since the end of things between him and Diane, he had resigned himself to friends – to having her at work, there to laugh and smile with those kind eyes. But that hadn’t happened, so even that had faded too. Just ships, passing in the night, is what it came to. And he can’t forgive himself for it

‘Mr Griffin?’ Donna says, putting the sheet of paper down.

‘I was just…’ he starts, shifting paper like his life depends on it in a bid to distract himself. ‘I came to get her stuff.’

Of course, as such an old and trusted friend it was Ric who had been given this task. But he hadn’t been there – the last thing he and Diane had done was argue, and now he was supposed to collect her things and take them to her parents, who not only hated him, but had already lost one daughter. Two was cruel, truly - fate conspiring to take their titles as mother and father when such a thing should never happen.  

It’s as he’s musing on Oliver and Carol Lloyd, that Donna crouches beside him, puts a hand on his arm and says, ‘Do you need some help with that?’

He nods shakily, watches Donna as she stands and then follows suit. He goes after her to Diane’s desk, the one behind his, and then waits as she disappears for a moment. Typical of Donna though, to ghost away at a time like this.

He realises where she’s gone at the same time her face reappears in the doorway. A record player, clutched in her arms, tells the story well enough. She puts it down on Ric’s desk, starts playing something soulful that they both sing along to despite the fact he only knows half the words.

They start with the surface; the typewriter moved to one side, to be used by the replacement whenever they dare appear. There is paper drowning the sides, taking hold like a tide, overflowing. He searches through them – these half finished articles, research, in the handwriting of a dead woman. On a deep red card he finds a phone number, one he recognises.

Chrissie. A secretary, once, to Diane’s former husband. He knew her mother, Tricia, because she had once worked on the reception desk twice a week. But then someone had died and there’d been an inheritance and now they were all living it up.

He had met Chrissie, too –most often at drinks’ parties hosted by the paper, seen the woman who swept in like a hurricane to ruin a marriage that had barely started. But shush, he’s not supposed to know that. A drunk Diane at a long past Christmas party told him, and only him. They lied to everyone else, said it was no one’s fault. Just time, forcing them apart. But Chrissie and an affair were certainly not just time and her number here, on the desk of a woman whose happiness she had tossed aside, seems odd to Ric.

Below the number it says ‘just do it’ but Ric has no idea if Diane had called Chrissie and thinks that now he never will.

As he opens the first of the drawers, the telephone on the desk starts to ring. Ric stares at it like it’s a wild animal, released from a zoo. Donna snatches it up, speaks quickly to whoever it is on the other end. Ric listens as Donna explains that Diane isn’t here right now, and then when pressed, that Diane won’t ever be here again.

He flinches at the words. They haven’t even sunk it to his skull yet, refused to budge his version of the truth where she is alive and happy and there. Diane is dead. Still, he refuses to accept it.

‘It was Jac,’ Donna says when she rings off. Jac, who worked here back before the war – Jac who went off to work in press management for the Byrne family. Jac, who doesn’t know that Diane was dead.

‘What did she want?’

‘Diane. Apparently they were supposed to have an interview today.’

‘An interview?’

‘That bloody woman. There’s always a scandal with Jac, don’t you just know it, Mr Griffin.’

He nods slowly, the music still falling through him like rain. He looks out the window, sees that the whiskey sky that was here when he arrived has gone. For days now he hasn’t slept, dancing on the edge of it all, never quite getting to oblivion. To keep himself awake, he brusquely opens a drawer.

There, he sees something he’s not expecting. It’s not filled with reports or notes or lists of contacts, but of bottles of sleeping pills, each with a bluebird on the cap. There’s at least two dozen, not just for her but for her lost sister too, even though she died years ago. There are only a few bottles with Jo Lloyd’s name on, and most are unlabelled anyway.

He holds one in his hand, turns it over. Stuck to one is a note, yet again in a Diane’s handwriting. It reminds him of the scribbled notes they’d leave each other on the good days, back when they could still call themselves friends.

Find who killed Jo. Or you die too.

And that’s it.  

  
  


iii

1936\. Sitting on the backseat of a car scything from side to side, trying to keep up a conversation with a woman whose eyes should’ve been on the road. Diane’s in the passenger seat, half turned around, eyes on him. And there’s Bernie, glancing back with alarming frequency, driving the car with little regard for safety.

But that’s Bernie isn’t it? Heading for a war zone as calm as anything. It doesn’t even seem to have crossed her mind that Spain is alight with gunfire, not if you had seen the ease of which she talks of other things. Of her son, just gone three, who she’s left behind to get here.

Diane’s not speaking much, has left Ric to reply as they bump and zigzag through the ever coming darkness. He thinks she’s probably deep in thought, wondering if she’s made the right choice. She’s young, with the eyes of child. Eyes that have not yet seen war. Ric’s have – he has old eyes, has seen too much of war and death but here he is, heading straight for it once again.

His camera’s on his lap, the lights of Madrid littering the far off landscape as he watches Diane. Bernie’s still talking, mentioning some friend who they’ll pick up on the way. His attention, however, is far off. Diane, whose eyes are steadfast on the horizon, doesn’t once look back.

‘We’ll get Alex and then head to the hotel,’ Bernie says.

So that’s what they do. Within a week the hotel’s gone, ruins left in its place with more history in its stone than Ric’s forty years give him. Then it’s the apartments and they’re forced to split – Bernie and Alex one way and Ric and Diane the other.

They meet up, of course, in a little café on the corner five minutes from each. Here, they share photographs, stories, eulogies for those they knew, but who are now gone. But back their separate ways they go again, Bernie and Alex, Ric and Diane. It’s only going to end one way.

  
  


‘Don’t tell me you didn’t see it coming,’ Bernie tells him, one day, years later, that summer of ’52. Bernie, who has outlasted everyone else. Bernie, who sits opposite him this very moment, so far from Spain and Diane and Alex. The last two. Who would’ve thought?

‘Ric?’ she says, hands clasped, eyes fixed on him. This is serious Bernie, the one who knows him. ‘What’s going on?

He doesn’t know how to explain. It seems Donna is his one confidant, the only person the words will appear for. It is Donna, though, who he has known just two years, and Bernie, who has known him decades. Maybe it’s the time, the less of it the easier it gets? The less of it, the easier it is to rewrite the history that came before.

In the end, he just shrugs. There are no words. He can’t tell Bernie, he can’t tell anyone. The woman sitting in front of him looks like she saw this coming – knows that he’s never been particularly good with words. That it’s always been photographs that he communicates with and right now, that’s not going to do anyone any good. There isn’t a photograph on earth that’ll explain his grief.

‘Would you like some time off?’ Bernie asks, her strained voice telling him that she already knows the answer.

‘No.’

‘Do you need to talk to someone?’

‘I’m talking to you,’ he says, knowing full well the answer will just annoy her. She doesn’t respond, just sighs and turns away. He’s not even really talking to her, is he? They’re just existing in the same room, which is rather different. The note on the pill bottle is weighing on him, refusing to budge from his conscience. Donna told him not to take it so seriously, but even she did not really believe that.

What was it about Jo that lead them here – that lead Diane to her early grave, her eyes darkened for the last time? He’s got the bottle in his pocket right now, and could easily take it out and show it to Bernie. But there’s something stopping him, a pull in his chest that says this is his problem. Donna’s involved herself and there’s no getting out of that now.

He’s so lost in thought that he doesn’t even hear the knock at the door. Just sees Bernie call for whoever it is to enter and then watches as Serena strides across to the desk. Quite why the head of local news is here, he’s not terribly sure.

‘Bernie,’ Serena says, handing a piece of paper over and taking a step back. Ric watches with an odd sense of detachment as Bernie starts to say something. His head is just too full. It’s summer, but he feels as if he’s got ice in his blood. His heart feels as if it was buried with Diane, smashed to pieces when she was.

The whiskey sun is back,  high in the sky above them, burning through the window overlooking Bernie’s office. He blinks, eyes blinded for a second. Everything is overwhelming him, even just being here is too much. He doesn’t know how to exist in this world anymore – guilt is like a colour on him, drowning him, changing him. And however much he tries, the words won’t come.

‘Ric?’ someone says, though he barely hears them; his mind whirling, the grief swirling in his chest. ‘Ric?’ It’s Bernie, he can see that now. He blinks again, adjusting to the light, to the noise.

‘Yes?’ he says, pretending to all the world that he’s been paying attention this whole time.

‘It’s for you,’ Bernie says, rightly deciding not to press him about his absentmindedness. Serena’s still there, eyes flicking between Ric and Bernie, equal concern for both evident in her eyes. Ric doesn’t stay for long after taking the message from Bernie.

He reads it once, stands and rushes from the room without saying goodbye. The letter is from Jac,  – Jac who’s known him just as long as Bernie but who ran away when the chance to be better reared its head. She wants to meet with him now Diane’s not here but doesn’t say why. Any other day, he would’ve ignored her – slipped her message to the back of a drawer, forget it even existed. Jac doesn’t interest him – they weren’t ever really friends, just colleagues pushed together by circumstances beyond their control.

At the bottom of the stairs, he finds Connie. She’s wearing a dramatic pair of high heels that that would’ve killed anyone else who wore them, he thinks. Donna’s there too, rifling through a stack of old papers. He goes straight past the pair of them, head low, without a word. Then out the red door, slipping on to the pavement.

He breathes deep, the air a welcome reminder that he’s still alive. His eyes feel heavy with tiredness and he wishes that he could close them and sleep. He walks quickly, not wanting to mess Jac around. Her message made it clear – the Café on Hanssen Street, four today. That’s it. He has no idea what she wants to talk about, but there’s something about her sudden reappearance in his, and before that Diane’s, life that strikes him as odd.

It’s that Diane didn’t tell him about it. She talked to Jac, arranged a meeting – and didn’t say anything. Not that they’d been the best of friends at the end, but Jac had been a shared enemy - someone they had battled against together.

And now, Jac’s meeting, meant for Diane, is his. In a way, he thinks he’s going to see her because it will give him a window into Diane’s last days. Had this been what she done in the hours before the end – talked to Jac Naylor, a rival, a foe, someone who would stab anyone in the back if it made her look better? The letter had told him only the bare details, that the meeting meant for Diane had been rearranged for him.

Jac has no eyes for anyone but herself, Ric’s sure of that, yet he finds himself at Hansen Street. She’s noticeable, to say the least, even though it’s been years since Ric last saw her.

A corner table, hidden away from the rest of the world, that’s where you’ll find Ric that afternoon. He refuses to order anything, not even a coffee to wake himself up, because the girl at the counter knew Diane and he can’t bare the idea of that conversation right now. He’s had to tell too many people about the fate that befell the woman he once claimed to love. Knowing himself is enough, but seeing that pain inflicted on others is something he wouldn’t even wish on his worst enemy.

And seeing that Jac’s at the corner table, Ric’s glad she already knows – even if Jac’s that out of the loop that she wasn’t even told before this morning. It had been Donna, with that cavalier, concern hiding, gossi’s tone who had given the news over. The near on decade that Jac worked side by side with Diane didn’t even warrant anything – no one even thought, not for a moment. The list of who had to know had already been to long.

‘I didn’t think you’d come,’ she says as he sits down.

‘I thought about ignoring it.’

‘I think, for you Ric, it’s good you didn’t.’

‘Why?’ he asks.

And then she says it, as easy as breathing. Like she’s not said anything at all, except she wants another cup of tea, or a biscuit. She’s not changed much, not at all. Just as blunt, he can see that now.

‘Do you want to know why Diane died?’

He nods, unable to speak yet again. So Jac leans forward and tells him.

  
  


She works for the Byrne family, handles the publicity for their pharmaceutical company. Ric knows of them, has had dealings with Charles, the father, before. They’ve been in the papers recently, Serena wrote a reflective on them when Charles announced his bid to become local MP. But there’s a scandal – secrets they don’t want revealed. This is what Jac tells him at that corner table. It’s all about them, Jac says –what happened to Diane, what happened to her sister. What’s happened, Jac claims, to others too.

It’s those pills, the ones Ric found in Diane’s drawer. It’s known, Jac says, that there was a new batch of them that just weren’t right. Bluebirds on the cap, that’s what she says, a different kind of pill – a trial, but one that didn’t work out. The company, it’s claimed, didn’t go by the rules.

‘She found out,’ Jac says. ‘Diane found out that those pills killed her sister.’

Ric stares at her, but before he can say anything, he becomes aware of someone behind him. When he turns he sees Donna, looking for the world like she ran here. Which, it turns out, she did.

‘I wanted to help,’ she says as Jac looks at her like she’s crazy.

And as it usually works out, if Donna wants to do something, she will.

‘So,’ she says once they’re finally up to speed, ‘you think this Byrne guy had Diane killed?’

Ric shakes his head. He knows what happened to Diane, and he’s pretty sure that Jac’s story has nothing to do with it. It sounds like fantasy, chalked up to truth.

Jac sets Donna right, after a fashion. Spells it out to her that Diane wasn’t killed - she took her own life – but, only because she felt lost; she couldn’t bring down the Byrne family for what they did to her sister.

‘And you, Ric,’ Jac says. ‘She felt she couldn’t talk to you.’ Which was a typically Jac thing to say, if he’s being honest. Doesn’t make it hurt any less though. Or make it a lie.

‘Do you have proof?’ Donna asks. Ric’s distracted now, his mind back in overdrive. He’s thinking of Jac and Diane, how they were once always at each other’s throats. But at least Diane was alive. At least he could speak to her, see her. But all of that’s gone now.

‘Of course there’s proof, I’m not a bloody idiot, Donna,’ Jac says, drawing Ric’s attention. ‘It’s at Diane’s house.’

And with that, Ric knows where he’s going next.

Except, as he emerges on Hanssen Street, Donna’s at his side. And Donna’s decided that Ric shouldn’t go to Diane’s house right this very second.

‘You need to adjust, right? What Jac just told you was some pretty big stuff.’

‘I need to, Donna.’

‘No, what you need to do, Mr Griffin, is go home.’

Oh god, he hasn’t been there since the news of Diane’s death reached him. He’s been unable to bare it – those walls, the photographs stitched into albums in the back bedroom. Ric had wanted to look at them, to trace the outline of Diane against a Spanish sky, caught so long ago. But there had been something forcing him away, the idea that in doing that he was betraying something.

Well, not something – rather, someone. Thandie, who waited for him at that house. Thandie who he had met in his homeland and brought back here on a whim. In his head, now, he wonders if it was to see Diane’s reaction but he refuses to think it for long.

‘You’re getting married in two weeks, Mr Griffin,’ Donna says. ‘The least you could do is go and see her before you start with all this conspiracy stuff.’

To be fair to Donna, she has that sort of way with people. She doesn’t exactly frog march him home, but near enough. Needling, until it seems it had been your decision in the first place.

So off he goes, in an odd kind of fugue state. Donna has disappeared back to the office to tell Bernie, or Mrs Wolfe as she calls her, of Ric’s sudden departure. She says it’ll be understandable, that they’ve all been under ‘immense stress’ recently, which Ric has to admit is true.

He knows the route home like the back of his hand, but he seems to have no memory of the journey that day. He’s just there, on the front doorstep, fumbling in his pocket for a key he doesn’t want to be there. If he’s lost it, he won’t have to go back – won’t have to face Thandie and her inevitable anger.  

But it’s there and he’s soon pushing it into the lock, turning it and falling forward into the house. It’s cool here, the curtains still closed. He walks through the hall wondering if Thandie’s even here. But he finds her all right. She’s in the kitchen, drinking a glass of wine. He sees her before she sees him and stays there for a moment, in some kind of in-between, knowing that she is standing right there, her blind anger palpable between them.

‘Thandie,’ he starts but he gets no further. She turns sharply, the wine glass clutched in her hands. He can’t look at her face, refuses to look into her eyes. He has no idea what he’ll find there. Anger? Disappointment?

‘Oh, you actually came back.’

And there it is. The bitterness he knew would be waiting for him. The bitterness he knows he helped to create. Thandie was an escape for him, a girl he’d met when he’d flown out to see his parents just a handful of months ago. A mistake, he thinks, though neither of them have said it yet.

‘I called Elliot today,’ she says, ‘Just to see if you were still alive.’

‘You didn’t have to do that, Thandie.’

‘Of course I did, Ric. You haven’t been home in eight days.’

He turns away, starts tapping a rhythm against the kitchen surfaces. Anything that’ll divert the nervous, angry energy building within him. A fight’s coming, he’s sure of that. He was sure of that the moment Donna told him to go home.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says, but Thandie just laughs. His apology doesn’t seen worth anything anymore, at least not to her. It’s what he should’ve said to Diane, but instead here he is with Thandie instead.

‘I’ve had enough of this Ric. You need to pull yourself together.’

‘I need to pull myself together?’ he says, incredulous. How could she be so cruel? Thandie, it seems, refuses on principle to understand any of it. ‘It’s not a secret that I’m not feeling particularly great right now.’

‘Particularly great?’ she laughs. ‘You’ve practically abandoned me.’

‘Don’t, Thandie,’ he says, trying to warn her away from this fight. It won’t be pretty, that’s clear to both of them. He’s too tired for this, for Thandie’s petty squabbles. He doubts, somehow, that this will be petty.

‘Anyway,’ she says, ‘as far as secrets go, what about you and Diane?’

‘Don’t bring her into this,’ he snaps, finally looking up at her.

‘You didn’t tell me some suicidal maniac was in love with you when you brought me over here.’

‘Don’t you dare talk about her like that,’ he says, his voice loud in this quiet. He watches her now, anger flowing through his heart. Matching her, he’d say - their twin bitterness slipping through the cracks they’d thought had been papered over.

‘Why shouldn’t I?’ Thandie says, daring him, drawing him on an issue he has never wanted to talk about.

‘Don’t push it, Thandie,’ he says,  ‘You might just hear something you don’t want to.’

They stare at each other then, the words heavy between them. It hangs, spoken but not yet reacted to. Thandie’s eyes are wild, wide and trained on him. He remembers meeting her, now. A meal arranged by his mother. It had been what his family had wanted, maybe that was why he’d entertained the idea, brought Thandie back here and said he would marry her.

‘Like,’ she finally says, spitting the word, the anger still just as fresh, ‘you’d rather have Diane as your wife?’

‘Well I’m never going to get the chance to find out, am I?’ The words fall from his mouth without conscious thought. As they are said, he knows that this is never going to be saved. This is it for him and Thandie and he almost feels relieved by it.

‘Go,’ she says. ‘Just go.’

So he does. He turns, heads for the door. He doesn’t look back once for he knows what awaits him in that kitchen: Thandie, arms crossed, a scowl on her face and bitterness in her eyes. Anger on her, plain to see.

Then he’s out on the street, unsure of what to do next. He heads to the nearest phone box and dials a number he’s learnt by heart. Diane’s desk phone, though he knows that she won’t answer. He just waits, the ringing in his ears drowning out much else.

He’s surprised, however, when someone does pick up. There’s a brief second when Ric thinks that it’ll be Diane’s voice, lilting and soft, reminding him of Spain. But it’s not, of course, and instead Donna’s tones echo through to him.

‘Hello?’ she says, before spewing the introductory greeting all the secretaries have learnt.

‘Donna,’ he says. It’s all he can say, Thandie’s voice in his head, his words repeating again and again.

‘Mr Griffin? Are you okay?’

He won’t reply to that, never has, never will. Instead he thinks of what he wants to do next, now Thandie seems to be a no-go. What now when his life seems to be stuck in the same ruins as Spain, decades before?

‘Would you like to go to the house with me?’ he says, for it’s all he can think. He wants the proof now, to double check that everything that Jac told him was true. Having Donna with him seems like a good idea, someone to keep him sane – keep him from going mad with it all.

‘Of course,’ she says.

He knew she’d say yes.

  
  


There’s spare key in the plant pot to the left of the door. He put it there for Diane almost ten years ago now, during the war, when lost keys were the last thing on everyone’s mind.

Ric finds it easily, searching through until the cold of the metal hits his skin. Then they’re in, him first then Donna following behind.

No one’s been here since it happened. Everything has been left just as it was – a half drunk cup of tea on the table, research books and notes left scattered to the four winds. It’s on the table that he finds the folder – Jo written on the front. He asks Donna to look through it, his eyes too tired for such a task.

It’s all there though, everything that Jac told them. Half started articles that tried to reveal the Byrne family secret. But nothing more, no concrete evidence. That was the problem, then, wasn’t it – being unable to unmask the people who had killed her sister had tipped her over the edge.

There’s a list of numbers on the table too, and Ric rings them as Donna continues to look through Diane’s things. The first is Owen’s surgery, which in itself is quite odd. Diane and her ex-husband didn’t exactly part on the nicest of terms and to Ric’s knowledge they hadn’t seen each over in over a year. It, paired with Chrissie’s number at the office, is part of a puzzle he has yet to fit together.

The other numbers are for contacts: one for Jac, and other for Joseph Byrne’s secretary, a few of Jo’s friends from back in the day.

Once he’s done that, he wonders around the house a little. It all seems so empty, a existence that has faded, nothing much of a life if he’s being honest. He doesn’t know how he didn’t see that she needed help – he’d been too wrapped up in Thandie, in the childish arguments he and Diane had had in the last few months.

He goes upstairs, a place he has been a handful of times. He remembers the night before her wedding to Owen, when they got drunk and laughed like they hadn’t in a long while. When she kissed him and they pretended that it was nothing.

‘Mr Griffin?’ comes a shout from downstairs that reminds him he’s not here alone. He’s not here to get lost in memories. There is a reason but he wishes to god that they’re hadn’t been – that Diane’s just in the bath and she’ll be out in a moment.  ‘I think you ought to see this.’

So down he goes to look at whatever it is Donna has found in this dead woman’s house. He finds her at the kitchen table still. There’s a box on the counter now, padlocked shut. He examines it from afar and as he gets closer he’s hit with a strange sense of loneliness. There is so much of her life that Diane had hidden from him over the years, even if they had once been so close. Spain had been their idyll, their one and only.

As he reaches Donna, he realises that there’s something written on the top of the box. At first, he can’t read it – assumes that it’s the evidence Jac claimed is here. But it’s not the Byrne name written on the top, nor anything to do with Jo – but it is a name. A single word which confuses Ric more than it helps him. Tricia. That’s it.

He has no idea why there’s a padlock on it, or why Diane has an entire box dedicated to a friend who just happened to be the mother of the woman who ruined her marriage. Was this why Diane had both Chrissie and Owen’s number written down?

None of this made sense to him. He’d thought that he’d known Diane, but it seems in this moment that his feelings were so very far from the truth.

  
  


iv

 

The attic of the house on St James’ Street, the winter of ’49. He finds Diane sitting by the window an hour after she said she was popping up to grab a reference book. He watches her from the door way, the moonlight slipping effortlessly into the room. She’s aglow with it, refracting, lit by it all.

He has his camera in his hands and the feeling that he should take this photo is overwhelming. It reminds him of Spain, of the way he would snap away at the world, at her. The photographs are in the back bedroom of his house, ready for someone to find when he’s gone. Maybe Diane herself, he thinks - he would like it to be her.

‘I heard what happened,’ he says instead of taking the photograph. He hates himself for that later, because the moment he speaks everything changes. She pulls herself back together, a rag doll fixed with tape and glue, a show put on for the rest of the world. Later, he wishes more than anything that he had that photograph, had said something different.

‘So everyone knows?’

He shrugs but guesses that they do. Bernie and Connie had been discussing it downstairs, and it had been impossible to ignore. It had been Elliot, swooping by, who had confined their gossip. told them to get back to work

‘Did you leave him?’ Ric asks, raising his camera. Diane stands, bats him away, crosses her arms. He can tell she’s upset, but he can’t find anything to make it better. He’s been divorced several times, with varying amounts of sadness. This for Diane is everything, the entire life she built up for herself, for Owen, is gone now. A divorce, that’s what’s happened. Irretrievable, broken, unable to mend.

‘What does it matter, Ric?’ she says, his camera still poised. He looks at her over the top, the sadness in the eyes he can only just see. There’s something between them, things that neither of them have said. But there they stay, there they will always stay.

He wonders later, much later, what would’ve happened if she’d told him the truth at that very moment – hadn’t waited for the Christmas party the next week, had shouted and screamed with him about Chrissie and Owen and their sordid little affair. Would it have changed anything, would it have brought them closer again?

But instead, Diane lies to him and he says, ‘You don’t think that certain opportunities have been missed?’ which in hindsight is the worst way he could’ve gone about it all. She stared at him, still cast in the moonlight, eyes on the edge of tears.

‘I’m coming to terms with my marriage breaking up, if that’s what you’re talking about.’

A pause. He’s still looking over the camera, trying to play it off as a joke. She’s looking out the window now, away from him, arms still folded.

‘Does that mean you feel able to move on?’ he asks, slowly.

Her eyes look confused, and he realises that she hasn’t really been paying attention to him, not since she faced away.

‘What are you asking me, Ric?’

‘I go back to that conversation we had in Spain, the final night.’

She turns to face him, blinks, then says, ‘That was a long time a ago.’

‘No it wasn’t, at least not to me.’

She puts a hand to her face, breathes out. Spain was a long time ago, but everything he felt then is still there. There’s just always been something, stuck in the way.

‘Well then, why have you never said anything?’

A breath, then, ‘I’m a coward.’ He remembers the rejection, can’t bare the idea of it again. And then she says it, her eyes finally on his – the camera placed down, forgotten. It makes him bitter, he thinks, what she says. Signs the death warrant of their friendship.

‘Well, if you didn’t have the courage to say anything, it can’t have felt that important.’

After Spain, they had stopped being lovers and now here, in a freezing attic over a decade later, their friendship goes the same way.  

  
  


The padlock proves to be problematic. At first, Ric thinks that it won’t take them long to break through but it soon becomes apparent that they’ll need a hammer and neither he nor Donna can find one here.

They go back to the office that summer of ‘52, running across the city while the dark roams around him, for Donna claims she knows that there’s a hammer there. Quite why, or how, she knows this escapes Ric’s knowledge and he decides that it’s probably better for everyone that he doesn’t ask the details.

While he waits for Donna to do her magic and find a hammer, he decides to go up to the attic. There’s nothing here now apart from paper, stocked high. There’s no Diane, caught in the moonlight. He stands there for a long time, memories falling back to him,  lilting notes of a song he has half forgotten. He’s worried that he’s going to lose Diane’s face from his mind one of these days; her voice is already fading and he hates himself for it.

He hears a door open down stairs, the one into the office, and guesses that Donna has returned with that fabled hammer. He climbs down the ladder, feeling all of his years, creaking and cursing at the movement.

As he steps into the room, however, it becomes apparent that Donna and her hammer have not yet made their appearance. He sees them in the doorway, a halo of moonlight around them.

Bernie, he identifies instantly but it takes him a second to realise that the second woman is Serena for she has her back to him. They’re kissing and he instantly feels embarrassed. He turns quickly, heading for the attic once again, but as he does so Donna suddenly waltzes into the room and announces rather loudly that ‘I’ve got the bloody hammer, Mr Griffin,’ which to be honest, rather rumbles the fact he’s loitering in the corner.

Bernie and Serena spring apart as if they’ve been struck by lightning. Donna wields the hammer like a maniac and Ric steps forward into the light. It all happens at once and it’s only him that can see it all.  

‘Donna,’ he says quickly, alerting her to the other people in the room with a not so subtle nod of the head. The hammer falls downward as she spins round to see Bernie and Serena, now two steps apart.

‘Oh, hello,’ Donna says, normal as anything. ‘It’s a nice evening out isn’t it?’

She puts the hammer down and starts to fiddle with the padlock again, leaving Bernie and Serena staring after her. Ric shakes his head, laughs a little. He notices that Donna’s lined up the pill bottles that they found in Diane’s drawer, the ones with the bluebirds on the cap. He picks one up as he turns to Bernie, as if it’ll help with the explanation.

‘We were just getting Diane’s things,’ he says, as if that reasons away the dramatic entrance with the hammer. Bernie nods, but does not give away whether she believes him or not. She also doesn’t offer a reason for her and Serena’s presences, though Ric’s already guessed and Donna’s yet to question it.

‘What are you holding, Ric?’ Serena suddenly says, practically jumping forward. Donna’s facing them now, given up with the padlock, and gestures at the bottle as she speaks.

‘Oh they were in Diane’s drawer.’

‘They were hers?’ Serena mutters as Bernie reaches out a hand to calm her.

‘What is it?’ Bernie asks, full of concern.

‘Elinor, she had pills like that in her room.’

Oh, Ric thinks. They all know about Elinor, Serena’s daughter. Died a year back, or thereabouts. Just twenty, one day full of life and the next there was nothing. Serena had been in bits, blaming everyone but Ric couldn’t begrudge her that.

He tries to explain, bringing up Jo and Jac, but the words don’t seem to come out right. Serena recognises the bluebird cap, which can only mean one thing if Jac’s right – if Diane was too, before she died. There’s a chance that Elinor was killed by those pills too, like Jo Lloyd.

It’s a lot for them both to take in – especially given that this all started with Donna and a hammer. Soon, they’re all sitting around Diane’s desk with pulled up chairs, attention rapt on the army of pill bottles reflecting in the artificial light.

‘What’s that box got to do with it?’ Bernie asks, as Serena rests her head on her shoulder. This revelation has taken it out her the same way it’s drained Ric – it’s Bernie and Donna, now, holding conversation while they exist around it.

‘We found it at the house.’

‘And you think it’s important?’

Donna shrugs, knowing that they don’t really know what it is. It just caught their gaze, that’s all – the padlock betraying that secrets lie within.

‘Don’t you think it’s invading her privacy?’

‘She dead, Bernie,’ Donna says, though they all certainly know it. Ric flinches once again at the spoken confirmation and looks away. The bottles, pristine and regimented, seem at odds with what seems to be contained within them. Death, it has been said, lurks within the pale blue capsules.

What now waits for them in the box labelled ‘Tricia’? He thinks Bernie is right, though, and that it won’t have anything to do with these pills. He knows they’ll open it though, right here and now, because there’s a curiosity chipping away at them. Diane killed herself and none of them saw it coming - why was that? Had they all gone blind, desensitised after all the war that has passed through them or was it just Diane they couldn’t see?

Donna stands, rising above them with the hammer like some odd play-pretend sacrifice. She lashes downwards and the padlock gives up after only a little effort. Bernie is the first to begin looking through the box, followed swiftly by Donna. At first, it seems there’s just more bottles, bluebirds on the cap, and Donna lines them up next to the others. But then there’s more, letters it seems, still in their torn envelopes.

For some reason, Bernie hands the first one to him, though it’s addressed to Diane. He takes it reticently, trying desperately to find an excuse. His heart is beating double quick, his eyes wishing they could be closed. Ric knows who it’s from because he recognises the handwriting as Tricia’s. He read it enough when she worked on the front desk here and it’s never left his head.

They don’t read them, of course, that would be a step too far. But there is something else in there that’s not a letter but a half written article. Typed, with the paper’s headings, alongside Diane’s signature style. Tricia’s name is there, as is her father-in-law Frank’s. As soon as he reads it, he knows he probably shouldn’t. Too personal, too private and he puts it quietly to one side, as Donna exclaims, ‘She bloody knows about this,’ like she’s just found the holy grail.

‘What do you mean?’ Bernie asks, leaning forward to take the piece of paper Donna is currently wafting about.

‘Tricia Williams knows that these pills kill people because Diane told her.’  

Ric looks up then, and wonders why Diane hadn’t been able to talk to him about this. He doesn’t wonder for long, though, because he already knows the answer, has always known since the moment he discovered she died. He pushed her away when he should’ve pulled her close.

She trusted Tricia though, Diane did. So Ric guesses that he does too.

  
  


v

 

Music, laugher, the winter of ’48. The windows are thrown open, the darkness invaded by light that fans out across the grass. The notes of a piano, played from somewhere far off, fall through the house like they’ve always belonged there. Waiters revolve around like toys from a doll’s house, glasses of champagne held aloft, above the small army of men and women clamouring for every last drop.

Ric stands apart from them, by one of the open windows, an untouched drink in his hand. He’s not sure why he’s here, really – seems out of place is this world of dress up and play-pretend. A Christmas party, most definitely different from the ones they usually have at the paper – crammed round the desks, drinking whiskey from mugs the same way they used to do in Spain.

This is Tricia Williams’ house, the one she shares with her husband and daughter. They bought it a few months a ago after a surprise inheritance dropped their way. Ric thinks that Tricia counted him as one of her friends, had invited him so he could see how the other half lived, so to speak.

The music is the only thing he concentrates on, trying to ignore the waves of people on his horizon. Tricia disappeared not long ago, and he’s seen Chrissie floating around a little. But he’s been lonely most of the time, waiting for an opportunity to leave. Part of him wants to stride across the night time grass to freedom, but fears that the Williams’ family will have guards, blocking the way.

A tad dramatic, but still, a break for it is still on his mind. There’s one thing stopping him, though, and it’s to that he now turns his attention to.

Diane, standing in another corner, eyes peering out into the mass of people spewing from all sides. He watches her the way he hasn’t in a long time – taking in everything about her. It’s her eyes though, keen and kind, that he always remembers when he thinks back to Spain.

She finds him soon enough, slipping through the maze to reach the other side. They stand side by side, twin backs to the masses, staring out the open doors. Owen’s here too, has vanished off the face of the earth, though, for all intents and purposes.

‘How are you finding it?’ she asks, leaning over to him. They seem to be conspirators here, plotting everyone’s downfall.

‘Terrible,’ he says, a laugh in his eyes. She glances up at him, can’t contain a smile either. He likes making her smile, he really does. It’s been so long, too, since he last did.

‘I think I agree with you.’ She moves closer to him so that she can whisper over the music, trying its very best to drown them out. ‘Would you like to dance?’

So there they go, strolling out to the centre of the room, her hand in his. It’s a familiar intimacy, one they both find it all too easy to slip back in to. This, though - being so close he can smell her hair - has been out of his reach for so long that it feels foreign, like it belongs to Spain, an entire nation just for that.

He misses her more in that moment than he thinks he has in the decade and a half since he last held her in his arms. Now she’s this close, he realises how far away she really is.

Diane leans her head on his shoulder, the music echoing through them note by note. He watches her as they fall together, completely unaware of the crowd spinning around them. He doesn’t see Tricia, watching them from the corner, arms folded, shaking her head. Neither does he, or Diane for that matter, notice as Owen and Chrissie practically fall from the room as one.

Here, it is just them – this is dancing the way they did in Spain, as if they are alone listening to Bernie’s stolen record player as the world around them turns to ruins. This is Ric and Diane, the way they will always be – together but apart, a war or Owen or their age setting them on different shores.

He holds her the same as he did back then, when the world died in the reflection of their eyes, in the flashes of their twin cameras. He remembers Alex, shot and bleeding in the street while they watched from the front window – the way they cradled Bernie as she cried. Diane, face pressed into his as they swayed in the moonlight, the night it happened. Was it this song, he wonders, or one like this?

Is he too caught in the past? No, there is Diane, standing close to him. He wishes he could press a kiss to her cheek, the way he has done before. But he can’t, he won’t, for Owen, her husband, is here somewhere – hundreds of witnesses dance around them and there are rules that he won’t break.

So they dance until they don’t, caught together and then pulled apart. Nothing is said, they just step away, their eyes dropping from each others. He sees her laugh, the crinkle in her eyes he knows so well. And then he slips away from the crowd, stepping out into the frost. His heart is beating like he’s a dying man. He closes his eyes, the music repeating in his mind.

A tap at his shoulder scares the life out of him and, as he turns, he finally sees Tricia. She’s more Diane’s friend that his but he smiles, shakes his head at his surprise.

‘They said it might snow tonight. Cold enough, ey?’ she says, her words measured and calm.

‘Of course.’

A momentary pause. Diane walks past them, into the open arms of Owen, freed from Chrissie’s clutches. Ric turns away, focuses on Tricia, the here and now and her words as she speaks.

‘You,’ she starts, ‘still love her.’

A heartbeat, then, ‘Of course.’

What else is there to say?

 

No music now. 1952, the year Diane dies. Tricia opens the door, talking over her shoulder to a figure he is yet to see. They’re not expecting each other, had gone their separate ways such a long time ago, and for a moment they just hang there, waiting, waiting.

‘Ric?’ she says. One moment, two, then, ‘Is this about Diane?’

He is lead through the arched corridors he has only seen through the prism of that one frostbitten evening, hears music when none sounds – the shadows are playing tricks on him, throwing ghosts from the dark. He can see Diane in every doorway, hear her laugh as he steps forward.

The living room, that’s where they end up. Tricia stands before him, arms crossed, ready to hear his reasoning. A man wanders into the room - her husband Ric supposes. There are shades of Chrissie in him but she is much more her mother’s daughter, Ric can see that now.

‘Mark,’ she says, ‘would you mind leaving us for a moment?’  And then he goes. Somewhere in the back of Ric’s mind, he thinks that this Mark is an old friend of Donna’s. Donna who he left with an excuse and a frown this morning at the office. They had all fallen into unconsciousness there: Bernie, Serena, Donna – and him, letting darkness take him as his mind whirred in double quick time.

Tricia lights a cigarette, the flame flickering, catching his eye. It is almost as if Diane is there between them, weighing heavily on the links that weave the distance: a thread, made of starlight and grief, of ghosts and memories. Diane, their common ground.

‘You wrote letters to each other?’ he asks, a question even though they are both painfully aware of the answer. Tricia nods, mechanically, a reflex. No need to lie now, no secrets to be kept.

‘Diane was one of my closest friends, truth be told.’

‘I found them in her house,’ Ric says, a feeble attempt to explain rolling off the tongue.

‘I thought you would.’

He wonders if she’s thinking about that winter night four years ago. It won’t leave his head, revolving like music box figures. Him and Diane, Tricia next to him in the freezing evening air. Owen, Chrissie loitering in the background. A tableaux but of what he’s not sure. Of an inner sadness, maybe, one that haunted them all?

‘It wasn’t all you found, was it?’ she says, taking a long drag of the cigarette, watching him out of tired eyes, eyes that match his he thinks.

A heartbeat, followed by another. The piece of paper is pressed into his breast pocket, hidden away. He thought, maybe, that he would’ve forgotten about it – that Tricia wouldn’t know, that it could remain there. A secret never to be told.

But here they are, at a crossroads, stuck for which way to turn. It would be easy for them to talk of something else, to distract themselves from their twin eyes, housing that matching uneasiness. He wants to reach out, to place a hand on hers but he knows that their friendship, tentative and formed of bridges through other people, is not made for that. It remains weak, Diane falling between them but she has never been strong enough to connect them.

He slips the piece of paper from his pocket, hands it to Tricia without a word. Ric looks away, lands his gaze on anything else. He sees a door, half kept open, through which is the room in which he and Diane danced all those winters ago. It makes him think of Spain, of her head on his chest during all those cold months that they were there.

‘Thank you for giving me this,’ she says, and he stays facing away. Ric doesn’t want to find her eyes, to know the look she is giving him. Diane’s article, he guesses, is still clutched in her hand – unfinished, unwritten, stopped by death and perhaps something else. Just a few paragraphs, that’s all, have caused this visit.  He read it last night, when Bernie hung above him, when Donna was to his right and Serena behind him. Surrounded, yet this isn’t about him, never has been – it is Tricia’s story, sitting opposite him.

Diane had been the secret keeper, the confidant. And it had lead them here, to this living room at this very moment, grief in the air, old eyes and old souls. Tricia has held this secret within herself for decades, now, and Ric’s just stumbled upon it – his knowledge less than twenty four hours old.

They won’t talk about it, not really – just riddles and half truths made up to look like the real thing. He knew that when he came, though, could see it in her eyes the second she opened the door, still talking to her husband over her shoulder. Ric knows Chrissie, knows that this would destroy her – part of him thinks he shouldn’t care for Chrissie given what she did, but he knows that he is kind, even if she isn’t. Wouldn’t wish it on a an enemy, truth be told. Any of it.

Tricia was raped, her husband is not Chrissie’s father. Mark, the man who wandered into this room oblivious to the article in Ric’s pocket, to the darkness that lies in Tricia’s eyes, the sadness she carries with her. Mark thinks he has a daughter, but it’s all just make believe. He has a sister, that’s what Diane’s article said – Frank Williams, Mark’s father, was a monster and now it’s come to this, just silence, when a story should be told. Never will, Ric thinks, not now. Too much time, after it all, too much bloody time.

‘You know she kept some things here, don’t you?’ Tricia says, her voice shaky. Ric ignores the wobbles, concentrates on the words. His mind is a mess, as he thinks, as is hers. They make quite the pair, sitting here on this summer afternoon.

‘Diane?’ he asks, though there is surely no one else of whom she speaks.

‘Yes.’

They have found their distraction, swerved from the road with talk of another broken soul. His, he thinks, or maybe Diane’s. Broken, all of them in this place – a generation of them, lined up like soldiers, beaten and battered from a war that’s been over years. It has been carved into them, all those wars, formed statuettes that were breaking when they were made. A generation of them, most probably, all cut from a cracked mould.

He and Tricia lived through too many wars, apart but together in the darkness. This house seems like it was once a war-zone, that arguments have been heard in its corridors. It remains, longer than most things, in the floorboards, the walls, in Tricia’s eyes.

They are frozen, now, by Tricia’s words. Her admission that Diane still lives here, if only in the fact she has left things in these walls. They catch eyes, wait, and then come back to life. There is so much unsaid between them – so much unsaid in Ric’s entire existence – that Tricia just goes. No words, nothing, just waltzing from the room like it’s four years ago. Like Diane’s going to be here any minute, but it’s not true.

He and Tricia, he thinks, are both rather good at living in play-pretend worlds. Their fantasies, where the past is wonderful, that nothing wrong lies in their wake. But the past is imperfect, has cracks and bruises lining them, their skin; scars last a lifetime.

Tricia comes back quickly, scurrying towards him in the bright sun. She’s holding two envelopes and hands one of them to him.

It’s full and as he peers through the top, he sees the familiar bluebird staring back at him. A pill bottle, like the ones they found at the office, like the ones from Diane’s house.

‘Why is this so important to you?’ Tricia asks, the other envelope placed on a table, forgotten in this moment. ‘Do you need to blame someone?’

‘I need to find out who did this to her.’

‘And you think that’ll help?’ she asks, lighting another cigarette and leaning back.

‘Something has to.’

‘And you think this will make you feel better?’

He shrugs, unsure of what to say. He told Donna he wasn’t doing this for himself, but for Diane. There had to be a reason, a purpose to it all somewhere.

‘Then,’ Tricia says, cigarette held aloft, ‘why don’t you blame her? She killed herself after all, Ric.’

He shakes his head and Tricia looks away. He won’t think about it like that, knows what she’ll say next. If not her, then why not him; the guilt, blame - shouldn’t some of it be shifted to him?

The envelope is still in his hands and he looks down at it. Stuck to one of the bottles is a note, Diane’s handwriting catching his eye. He pulls it towards him, emboldened again. He reads it once, twice, then looks up at Tricia. There’s someone else they’ve forgotten. Someone else who is at fault for this – who needs to take some of Ric’s blame.

The note is only three words long, but Ric’s worked out what to do now.

Owen was wrong, scrawled in a dead woman’s hand. A map, maybe, that’s what this is. Puzzle pieces that don’t seem to fit together right. But Owen it is. Owen who broke Diane by leaving her.

You can’t, Ric thinks, leave someone’s heart the way you found it. There is no whispered exit to be found; you go kicking and screaming or no way at all. In Ric’s case, he thinks he decided not to go, had felt it was impossible. Owen, however, had not. He had gone all guns blazing, said things that could never be taken back. He hadn’t cared, Ric thought, that Diane had handed him everything. Ric’s made his decision now, sitting in Tricia Williams’ living room. He’s sure, so sure, that he’ll find someone to hold the blame with.

So Owen it is.

  
  


The Spanish air dancing before his eyes, a river running under them. Diane at the side of the bridge, spring 1937, just days after Elliot’s note asking to bring them home. They’re over. She said no, and that was all of it, falling around his ears. They pretend, of course, and they’re both so very good at that.

Bernie’s down on the riverbank, kneeling by the water. Alex is dead. Maybe a week now, since. That’s why the call home came. Death, that old familiar friend, has that effect on people. He’s holding his camera, fingers deftly moving in a bid to capture the images of war. Past Diane, further than Bernie, is a city that waits in ruins. Ric doesn’t focus on that, but on Diane. Things have been different between them, desperate and rushed, held apart by what she said. Their relationship is dying, has been dying ever since that night. No way now but this.

He lifts his camera and takes a single photograph. There is Diane, front and centre, unaware; she is innocent in this slaughter. This is for him, not for the pages of the paper, not for others to pour over. A memorial, the death of love in action, maybe, if she ever loved him at all.

Bernie comes from the bank, hand up to hide the sun, calling something out. ‘About time we moved on.’

There’s a car, waiting for them, then a drive to the airport in Valencia. Zigzagging over the country the way they came in. They’re all changed from the people they were then, but then a war can do that to a person. He and Diane are not lovers anymore, Bernie is broken. Alex, well, she’s gone the way of the sun, blazing out in the dark.

The border calls for them, home too. The heart calls home, he thinks, but he’s not sure where that is. Diane, she was a home, a harbour, a place of safety.

The rumble of the car starting thrums through the evening air. Bernie’s already climbed in, ready to get out of this hell. There’s another war coming, of course, a war for them to fight in, a war in which they cannot just watch as spectators and take pretty pictures.

Diane’s still by the bridge and he watches her turn. She comes over and smiles. There hasn’t been smiling for a few days and he wonders if it’s forced, fake, a lie. But he thinks not, when she is there in front of him, pulling him into a hug.

‘Friends?’ she whispers into his ear.

‘Friends,’ he says and she presses a kiss to his cheek before clambering up into the passenger seat. He pulls himself into the back, takes one more shot. Bernie and Diane, the sunset burning out the windscreen of the car.

‘Ready?’ Bernie says, the car thrumming, the night preparing to douse them in darkness.

‘Ready,’ he and Diane say together.

And that’s it for Spain. A nation in free-fall, their souls same.

  
  


1952, summer, Diane still walking the earth.

She’s staring up at him; the empty office, the midnight hour. Days before she died.

‘Spain,’ she says, ‘we had something special. What happened Ric?’

He waits: angry, bitter, vicious.

‘It’s another country.’

  
  


Bernie, standing beside him the night he visits Tricia. The attic of the office, whisky in mugs, shadows thrown against the walls. Diane, Alex, ghosts of Spain that haunt them both.

‘You know, Ric,’ she says, staring forward, ‘Diane was the best of us.’

A nod, then Bernie keeps going. The alcohol has loosened her tongue, set them both free. He listens, closes his eyes.

‘After Spain, I often thought the two of you would end up together.’

  
  


There’s a story out there somewhere, of four people who travelled to Spain on the eve of war. A version, lost in translation, maybe? Four, who still dance to the record player early in the morning, and who love like they’re dying. But four souls who come back, who climb into the car by the bridge.

Four souls, who don’t get broken.

Yes, he thinks, there’s a story out there somewhere.

  
  


vi

 

‘What do you want to do, Mr Griffin?’ Donna asks, standing by him on the pavement.

‘Call me Ric,’ he says, shaking his head.

‘What do you want to do then, Ric?’ she says and he holds back a laugh. It’s morning now, the early light splitting the street. He found Donna at the office this morning, ready and raring to go. It’s clear to him now that Diane’s death has hit her hard, there’s something in her that needs to know what happened, just like Ric.

They’re outside Owen Davies’ medical practice, and they’re preparing their next move. He’s filled Donna in on what he found at Tricia’s – the note, the bottles, but nothing of the article and the secrets, pushed to one side with regard for the pain they could cause.

As Ric is trying to come up with a plan of action, the door to the practice swings open and Owen himself strides out. He’s got flecks of grey in his hair now, eyes still beady and suspicious. Donna practically leaps forward at this development but she takes a step back when it becomes apparent that Owen’s heading straight for them.

‘Long time no see, Ric Griffin,’ he says, pulling at his tie as if it’s strangling him. Donna stays mercifully quiet and Ric takes a deep breath before asking,

‘Did you hear what happened to Diane?’

Owen blinks for a moment, actually seems to show some emotion and says, ‘Of course I did.’

They face off like that for a moment, Donna an odd intermediary between them. Ric watches his old adversary closely, remembers back to the first time they met. Diane, running between them, trying to make sure the introductions went smoothly.

‘Are you here about her?’ Owen says, bristling at the mention.

‘I’m here about the bluebird pills.’

A moment, Owen’s eyes go wide and Donna raises a very unsubtle eyebrow. It wouldn’t surprise Ric if she winked at him now, just to make sure he caught Owen’s reaction.

‘That then,’ Owen says distastefully. ‘You better come in then.’

  
  


They end up in an office, books littered around. Owen’s hidden himself behind a desk, offers them seats and relaxes backwards. Ric refuses to sit, but Donna slips into the one closest to the table. They wait in awkward silence for a while, until Owen shrugs and says, ‘She came to see me the other week, you know. You’d have never guessed what she was going to do.’

Ric happens to disagree, thinks that there were probably signs that Diane was unhappy, but that they all refused to see – they were all busy with other things: Ric with Thandie, Bernie with Serena, Owen with himself. They never gave Diane a chance, never really looked at her. They let her slip through the cracks, and Owen’s just as much at fault as he is, Ric thinks. He didn’t want to see either.

‘What did she want?’ Donna asks, jumping in. Ric’ll make a journalist of her yet, he thinks, she’s got a sound mind for it.

‘You,’ Owen says, addressing Ric, ‘and your lapdog already know. Those bloody pills.’

‘What about them?’ Donna presses and Owen scowls. He doesn’t like to be spoken to by a stranger, and especially by a woman like Donna – so full of confidence.

‘She wanted a list, was telling me all this stuff about them.’

‘That they were dangerous?’ Ric asks, already knowing the answer. He thinks he’s got Diane’s motivations sussed by this point – knows that somewhere along the way she hit a wall. Ric wonders if it was here that it happened, if the final straw was her own ex-husband.

‘Yes. But I didn’t know. She wanted to know who I’d given them to. She was very specific, wanted to know about the pills with the bluebird on the cap.’

‘Did you give it to her?’ Donna questions, disregarding the unhappy look on Owen’s face.

‘Yes.’

‘Do you have a copy?’ Ric says, and Owen pulls one of his drawers open. A piece of paper is placed on the table, eight names, that’s all; Ric counts them quickly. Owen falls back in his seat, closes his eyes. There’s a flicker of something there, something Ric may even say is pain. In all the years Owen and Diane were married Ric would’ve sworn blind that there was never any love there – maybe idolisation on Diane’s part, but not on Owen’s. Here, though, so long after their divorce, Ric can finally see something – that if not love, maybe Owen had affection for her. Why else have those eyes, so caught in regret, in brokenness?

What have they done to each other, he thinks, he and Owen – their lives intertwined by that one kind-eyed woman, whose heart, at different times, belonged to both. So much anger between them now, so much bitterness.

Donna picks up the list and Ric starts to read it over her shoulder, dropping his gaze from his former rival. He repeats the names in his head: Maddy Young, Penny Valentine, Tara Lo, Victoria Merrick. They are all strangers but then three more that he knows - three more he can put faces to. Jo Lloyd, Diane’s sister. Elinor Campbell, Serena’s daughter. Another, then, that he hasn’t been expecting: Jasmine Burrows, Jac’s sister. He met her, years ago now - used to come to the Christmas parties as a child, dragged by Jac because there was no one else to look after her.

‘Are all of these people dead?’ Ric asks, though he already knows about Elinor and Jo. Owen stares blankly back at him, nods his head slowly. He doesn’t want to admit it out loud, of course, it’s a personal failing. A mistake to give these pills to anyone.  

This changes things, Ric thinks, because he’s almost one hundred percent sure that Jac doesn’t know the bluebird pills killed her sister.

  
  


They find Jac in a car park in pretty unorthodox fashion. After Owen’s office, they jump into Donna’s car and career across the city. He instructs her as she goes, the memories of roads he’d driven summers and summers back, shouting over the buzz of the engine.

So into the car park they skid, the ever encroaching darkness falling into them. They’ve made it to the Byrne estate, somewhere Ric has only been a handful of times before. It’s a miracle, really, that they got here in one piece at all, given his directions and Donna’s driving.

They’re swerving past a parked car when Jac Naylor, she whom they have come to speak to, emerges from the house. So yes, a little unorthodox, but exactly how they planned it, of course – not that Ric really put much thought into it after seeing Jasmine’s name on that list.

Following Jac is Joseph Byrne – son and heir, whose brother Ric seemed to remember died in mysterious circumstances. He wonders now, watching from the dangerous angle of Donna’s car, whether it had anything to do with the family pharmaceutical empire.

Jac and Joseph walk through the cars, and it’s only Donna, shouting through the driver's side window, that pulls them to a halt. At first, it’s only Joseph, but Jac catches Ric’s tired eyes and turns back. She knows that she set him on this path and isn’t surprised that he’s returned after so short a time.

‘You can’t drive through here like that,’ Joseph says as Donna practically jumps from the car. Jac’s hanging back, watching Ric. His own gaze keeps switching, remembering the last time he had found himself here. A press event, that was it, with Diane at his side. He’s got a memory of Connie, teetering on her heels, walking around like she owned the place. God knows why she was there, but the memory’s there all the same. That must’ve been years back, he thinks, a different age. Before Donna, at least, so that sets its own time.

‘Oh, sorry,’ Donna says, sounding like she’d do it again in a heartbeat if the opportunity arose.

‘What you doing here, Ric?’ Jac calls, arms crossed. Joseph stares back at her, wide eyed that she’s got something to do with this. He looks angry at her, Ric thinks, though it’s well hidden. Joseph’s eyes, that’s what betrays him.

‘I need to talk to you,’ Ric says, wishing for a moment that it was just him and Jac. They had both known Diane - Jac was there before Spain, had been there after too. Jac had been a constant, until she hadn’t. Like Diane, truth be told.

‘Whatever it is, Ric, just say it. No need to pretend you’re walking on glass.’

‘Your sister,’ he starts and he sees her bristle at the words.

‘What about her?’ Jac says, as Joseph leans back and puts a protective hand on her arm. He knows, Ric thinks, about the dead sister. For some reason it surprises him. He’s never realised how deep Jac has got herself with the Byrne family.

‘She was killed by those pills.’

  
  


Jac, in free-fall, that’s what happens next: a moment lasts a lifetime. The smallest of movements magnified, timesed by a hundred and pulled into sharp focus. Jac, slipping forward, buckling for second, if that - a gut punch, ghosts flitting between them. Jasmine, Diane, the hair standing up on the back of your neck. A shiver, Joseph’s hand that little bit tighter. Donna, turning away, knowing that this is personal, sympathy in her eyes even though she doesn’t really know either of them – not Jasmine and certainly not Jac.

Caught, that’s what they all are. Butterflies, trying to fly away – trapped, fragile, so easily broken. That is Jac, underneath it all. Ric sees this all in the mere moments after his announcement. Old eyes matching a battered soul. Him and Jac, always there but never close. The only two left, right now, who know – truly know - what this means.

‘Jasmine?’ she says and Donna answers with a nod of the head. No more words, not now. Jac’s always there with a cutting, sarcastic remark, but not now. Now it’s silence. Even Donna’s been stunned to it, and that’s almost enough to set Ric on edge. He’s so used to her chatter that this quiet is unnerving. Jac falters, steps forward. ‘There’s something I think you need.’    

It’s in her car, the far end of the gravel expanse. Ric guesses that’s where she and Joseph had been going when he and Donna had majestically arrived. Jac finds it in the glove compartment, hands it over quickly, as if she wants it out of her sight.

It’s a Dictaphone, and he has to hold it with two hands. Cumbersome, heavy, but, as Jac’s about to tell him, vital to what comes next.

‘What’s this?’ Donna asks, while Ric stares down at the machine in his arms.

‘This-’ Jac says, her sparky confidence back, ‘this is what you need to take Charles Byrne and his bloody company down.’

  
  


They listen to the recording back at St James’ Street, huddled around once more in the growing dark. Bernie’s lit up her office but doesn’t emerge, chatting away on the phone to someone who Ric assumes is Serena. Bernie seems to Ric, these days, like a shadow, a rainstorm full of anger and sadness. So many secrets, she holds, as to who she is – Alex, Serena – the women she has loved. Society refuses to accept that, even though it’s just love. Love, surely, is universal, should be celebrated and not called out on it. No one knows, though, about Bernie and that universal truth, but Ric does  – Diane did too, back in Spain – a handful who understand that love is love.

When you’re dancing at 3 AM to records in a war-zone, it doesn’t really matter if you’re a woman dancing with a woman, or a man far too old dancing with a woman far too young. You laugh the same, two whiskeys down.

  
  


Jac’s voice, this is what greets them when the recording starts. Crisp, clear and it takes Ric back years – to Jac’s tone on the telephone, calling him in Spain to tell him about the paper. Jac, unhappy that it wasn’t her over there with the camera, that she had been left behind, replaced

by Diane.

‘Letter thirty, to Charles Byrne. Written by Detective Inspector Michael Spence on the subject of road closures,’ the recording starts, and right now Ric can’t see how this will help them. He waits though, knowing that however calculated and cruel Jac can be, she wouldn’t lie about this – not when it’s Jasmine who has suffered. Family is family and you don’t mess with Jac’s.

On the recording, Jac’s voice suddenly cuts out, and a loud crack sounds. A door slamming perhaps. Silence, a few beats of it. Then Jac’s back. Donna shoots him a look, poised ready to write a transcript. ‘I heard you’ve been looking for me.’

No break, then Joseph’s voice is there – angry, all sharp edges and pain.

‘You spiteful whore.’

Donna raises that eyebrow again, scribbling down the insult quickly.

‘Well that accelerated rather fast,’ she says, still not looking around at Ric. He’s leaning back, taking it all in.

‘You want to take this somewhere private?’ Jac says on the recording.

‘Gladly,’ Joseph replies, before the sound of another few doors closing echoes through the tape.

A pause, then, the sound of shifting paper and no speech. Donna finally glances up at him and Ric shakes his head. He has no idea what this domestic has to do with the Byrne Family empire and their eventual downfall.

‘Your father loved me,’ Jac says, which is really not what Ric was expecting. He knew Jac was a social climber – that she started with nothing and would do most of anything to get to the top but Charles Byrne? It seemed there was no line Jac Naylor would not cross. Unless it included her sister, of course.

‘Hanging on by your fingernails, aren’t you?’ Joseph spits.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ that’s Jac, and Ric can see the shake of the head that surely went with those words. Is this it- a scandal to bring them down, but not the bluebird pills.

‘The master plan hasn’t quite panned out.’ Joseph, voice wound tight. Donna’s still writing down, and Ric’s trying to reconcile the Joseph here on the recording to the one he saw at the car park that evening, the one who seemed protective of Jac. It seems that some things could be forgiven, even if that something was sleeping with your father.

‘You screw me to get to my dad. You screw him to climb up the greasy pole but now he’s dropped you so you’re seeing if there’s anything left to screw out of my family.’

‘Joseph,’ she starts, and the sound of a chair scrapping of the floor is heard. ‘Your father isn’t a good man.’

A beat, then the sound of the recording being switched off is heard. That’s it, then, Jac’s smoking gun. Ric turns a little to see Donna and notices that Bernie has escaped her office. She’s standing in the doorway now, arms folded.

‘You going to bring them down like that, then?’ she asks and Donna spins at the words.

‘Can we do that?’ Donna asks, and Ric watches, still trying to get head round it all.

‘We can do what we want if we think it’s news,’ Bernie says, with a twinkle in her eye. She lost Diane too, and Ric can see it in her eyes. He’s seen it before of course, grief in Bernie: Alex, going the way of the sun. Haunts a soul, doesn’t it, grief?

‘Will it work?’

‘It’ll destroy the family, if that’s what you want to do.’

Donna nods, and Ric closes his eyes. He’s not sure of the morals, here – because it won’t just break the Byrnes but Jac too. He counts Jac as a friend, but she must’ve known what giving them this would bring upon her.

‘I’ll give you the night to think it over,’ Bernie says. She adds, ‘Ric?’ when he doesn’t seem to react and he just nods his head. It’s dark out now, the street-lamps orange glow streaming into the room.

Their late night decision making is interrupted by the shrill noise of the telephone ringing. It reminds Ric of the other day, when Jac called. It’s Diane’s phone again, ghost like and calling to them the story of another day.

This time, Ric picks it up. It’s Tricia.

‘I only had Diane’s number but I need to see you again.’

So off he goes.

  
  


Donna’s car, again, hurtling through the night.

‘What is this about?’

‘Diane,’ he says.

It’s always about her.

  
  


The front door. Mark opens it, stands for a moment looking between the two of them.

‘Donna?’ he says, uneasy, unsure. She clicks on, turns into the chatty woman he knows her as. Talk and distract, that’s what she does. Mark invites them in, leads Donna away discussing parties and laughing all the way. He hears them as they go.

‘I heard about Diane,’ Mark says, with a shake of the head. ‘You never know,’ he adds as they walk away, ‘what’s around the corner.’

‘A bloody great train, that’s what,’ Donna replies. Typical Donna, he thinks.

He sighs, turns away. Ric waits in the hall, arms crossed, and watches as Tricia makes her way down the main staircase.

‘We haven’t got long,’ she says, taking him by the hand and leading him away. ‘I forgot to give you something when you were last here.’

Back into the living room, to the sofa. Tricia sits, leans back to retrieve something. When she rights herself, she’s holding an envelope.

‘It’s from Diane,’ she says as she hands it over.

‘For me?’ he asks.

‘For you.’

He turns it over in his hands, the light paper. A letter, not evidence, not those damned bluebird pills. Something for him in all this mess.

He doesn’t get to read it though, because the door is thrown open and in strides Chrissie.

Chrissie, who ruined Diane’s marriage. Chrissie who isn’t Mark’s daughter. Chrissie who certainly wasn’t expecting Ric to be sitting in her parents’ living room. Mark follows behind, Donna falling in their wake. The three of them stand round the door, and time freezes for a moment. They are a tableaux, fixed like this for a handful of heartbeats.

Chrissie mumbles something about wanting to talk to her mother, while Mark stutters an excuse about Donna being an old friend. Tricia remains silent, a passive figure with Ric. Then Chrissie turns back to Mark, says something that ruins everything, though Ric isn’t to know, Diane’s letter still held in his hand.

‘It’s alright mum, I’ll go bond with my dad, at least he makes time for his daughter.’

A pause, a blink. Mark, Ric realises in this moment, knows that he doesn’t have a daughter, but a sister. He looks suspicious, won’t meet Chrissie’s eyes. Ric guesses Tricia told him in the gap between these visits.

‘You,’ Chrissie starts, jokey, laughing, ‘are my dad, aren’t you?’

Ric moves quickly, through the fracturing family that stands, wide eyed and gaping, beside him. He takes Donna’s hand, leads her through the nearest door. Ric closes it quietly behind him, shushing Donna’s attempts to speak. He looks around, sees no other doors now. They’re in a kitchen, the only way out back through the mid-destruction Williams family.

Donna sits down. Through the walls they hear Tricia’s voice. They may have left the room, but they can’t escape the fight.

‘Course he is.’

Chrissie, now, the joke over – serious, betraying something akin to sadness. ‘I want to hear him say it.’

Donna blinks, stares at Ric over the wooden table. They’re stuck here now, Diane’s letter weighing in his hand, Jac’s tape in his mind, Chrissie’s voice falling through the wall like rain.

‘Don’t be daft,’ Mark says and Donna takes the next pause to ask a question that’s been on her mind since Chrissie’s little interruption.

‘What’s going on, Ric?’

‘Nothing pretty,’ he replies, for he knows how this will end.

Through the wall comes Chrissie once more, snapping, ‘Say it,’ like she knows Mark won’t.

There’s a pause then, too long, too full of tension. Ric can see through a crack in the door: Chrissie wheeling round, eyes now on her mother. This is it – Frank William’s poison dripping even now. Ruining things he shouldn’t be able touch. It reminds Ric of Charles Byrne, of his disregard for the women his pills killed. A quick bit of cash, that’s all he’s interested in – damn Jo and Elinor and Jasmine. Damn Diane, who hadn’t had Jac’s recording, had no way for justice.

Chrissie knows now, Ric can see the realisation dawning in her eyes.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, love,’ Mark says, for Tricia cannot find her voice. Ric doesn’t blame her – wishes he wasn’t trapped here with Donna and her expressive eyebrows, watching a family implode from within.  

‘How long have you known?’ Chrissie asks, angry now the shock’s starting to fade. It will last a lifetime, though, because you don’t get over something like this – something that shakes the very foundations that your life is built from. Diane’s death did that to Ric, changed how he felt about those last few months. Put things in perspective, maybe.

‘He’s known a few days,’ Tricia says, her voice steady but with that edge of panic that Ric knows well. He turns around, sees Donna staring at him. She’s written something down on a piece of paper and holds it up so he can read it. This is what you came to speak to her about, the other day. He nods. Ric thinks Donna’ll make a good journalist, yes. One day.

‘So,’ Chrissie starts, her voice loud even from this distance, ‘if he isn’t my dad-’

‘No. He is your dad-’

‘Stop it,’ Chrissie counters to her mother’s pleas. ‘Tell me the truth.’ A pause, Ric can imagine the meeting of eyes, the hearts breaking in time. ‘Who is it?’

A beat. Ric closes his eyes. He knows. He shouldn’t, no one else should. Diane, the secret keeper, was the only one who should’ve been trusted with this. A breath, Tricia building and building and then she says something that breaks even Ric.

‘I don’t know. There were a few at that time.’

She lies. Ric sees Chrissie turn away, disgusted.

‘Oh Chrissie, love,’ Mark says, trying to salvage something of his relationship with the woman who believed, until just now, that she was his daughter. The woman who will never know she is his sister. Not now.

The sound of a door slamming echoes through the space. Ric sees that Chrissie has gone, leaving Tricia and Mark in her wake. This is the war-zone, the one he sensed the last time he was here. The screams through the wall, the fights tattooed into damaged skin.

Ric resigns himself to this room. He won’t try to leave now, he’ll give them the privacy that they desperately need. Ric sits next to Donna at the table, placing Diane’s letter so that he can see his own name scrawled on the front.

‘Are you going to read it?’ she asks.

‘I will,’ he says and watches as Donna moves up a few seats, looks away.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says, ‘that she died.’

‘Oh, me too,’ Ric says. ‘Me too.’

  
  


Later that night. Everything is over. Ric stands by Bernie, looking down at Jac’s recording.

‘You ready to do this?’ she asks.

‘Of course.’

And that’s it. Down tumble the Byrne family. Just like Diane wanted.

  
  


A winter wind, that night in ’48. Tricia’s Christmas party. Before, when her daughter knew lies as the truth, before Diane fell into that hole she couldn’t get out of. Music, the sound of piano. He sits on the steps, far away from the hum of chatter. Diane is beside him, staring out at the darkness.

'I think,' she says, looking up at him, her head resting on his shoulder, 'one day, you'll give me your name.' She pauses, slightly. 'It's a good name.'

‘Oh,’ he says.

A pause, he watches her pull away, wishing he’d said something else. She stands above him, haloed by the dark - her eyes, kind and keen, lighting up the night.

‘Goodbye,’ she says, pressing a kiss to his cheek.

‘Goodbye,’ he says. ‘Goodbye Diane.’

  
  


‘Marry me,’ he says. And that is that. Spain, 1937. Alex is dead, they’re going home in a few days.

Yes, indeed. This is the end of it, nothing else to do now.

‘No,’ she says.

And that, he thinks, is how history is made.

  
  


Dear Ric,

I think that it’s best to keep this short, if not particularly sweet. We’ve been friends for a long time and all I ever wanted was for us both to be happy. It’s a shame that we couldn’t find that happiness together. I know now that will never be the case. So I wanted to tell you that the news about your engagement has helped me really focus on what’s wrong with my life. I’m glad you found what you needed. Goodbye.

All my love, Diane.

 

1952\. Tricia’s kitchen. He reads the letter.

He cries.

  
  


An office on St James Street, 1935. A young girl, straight out of school, stumbles through a door past a woman in too-high heels. She speeds round the corner, makes her way up the winding staircase, camera clutched in her hands.

She falls through the office door, finds the first person she can.

‘I’m Diane,’ she says, holding out a hand. ‘Nice to meet you.’

The man laughs, shakes her hand.

‘I’m Ric,’ he says. ‘Let’s begin, shall we?’

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
